sunset from behind the wire

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Michelle Obama promoted "healthy"
school lunches that turned out to be
too foul for children to eat.

The Fox News website had an interesting piece on school nutrition. It seems that schools in the American South have banned grits. I'm not sure what a grit is. I've eaten them before, but not being from that part of the country, I don't eat them regularly. The Obama White House apparently banned them in schools along with biscuits and gravy. Naturally, as the article points out, biscuits should be made from buttermilk and Martha White Flour.

The Obama administration also had a problem with traditional Southern buttermilk biscuits made from Martha White Flour.

“Biscuits have to be 100 percent whole grain,” Ms. Dillard said. “It’s not the kind of biscuit you would see at a restaurant.”

Nor is it the kind of biscuit you would see on your grandmother’s dining room table or a Wednesday night church supper. Why, no self-respecting Southerner would ever serve such an atrocity.

The people of Alabama are trying to restore the imbalance caused by the era of Obamanation and want both grits and genuine biscuits returned to the school menu. The Obama menu included the government sanctioned whole grain cathead biscuits but the kids just threw them in the trash...who wouldn't? I would think that the biscuits could be thrown by high school students, but if you hit somebody in the head with one, it could kill him. There's a lot of liability there.

What's Taught in School

Teachers in Great Britain must be insane. (Fox News) But I'm not going to say that it won't or isn't happening in the US, because our education system is twisted beyond all rationality at present. The British Teacher's Union wants to encourage sodomy as a lifestyle choice among daycare children.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) called on members this week at their annual conference in Wales to promote LGBTQ issues to children -- beginning in nursery school. NUT also urged ministers to make proposed sex and relationship education “inclusive” of lesbian, gay, and bisexual issues.

“It is far better that children are provided with accurate information in the classroom rather than inaccurate information in the playground,” a NUT booklet on advice for teachers about LGBTQ equality and transgender issues said.

Happy Earth Day

Predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.

3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”

6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”

7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.

8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.

12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.

13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).

14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”

15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.

16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”

18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

Being a skeptic at settled science has some basis in reality. It's good to look at the past, even though the progressive thing to do is listen to your local Democratic Party apparatchik and take what they say as gospel.

Syria

US news sources reported that Syria has redeployed most of its operational combat aircraft near the Russian base of Khmeimim in northwestern Syria. The move is said to be a precaution to deter additional attacks by the US from destroying the Syrian air force.

The Syrian government denied the report. A spokesman said that some aircraft routinely moved to Khmeimim and others used it because of its proximity to terrorist targets.

Russian forces and the Russian government have been severely criticized for not shooting down any of the US cruise missiles used in the 7 April attack. When Russia deployed advanced air defense systems to Syria, military officials said that they were to help defend Syria from outside aggression. They later revised that mission statement, but Russian analysts commented that the US attack fell within the rules of engagement for any basic air defense mission.

Some writers suggested that the missiles were not used because they are not effective against US cruise missiles. They wrote that the government is doubly embarrassed by the US attack because it occurred and because it revealed the limits of the anti-missile system in which the Russian government has heavily invested.

The Russians are now under pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness of the air defense system. I don't think that they want the US to launch a cruise missile attack on Khmeimim Air Base to demonstrate its effectiveness (or lack thereof) all the same...

Housekeeping

As of January 1, 2017 this blog began to receive anonymous posts. I try not to delete them, but if you want to be taken seriously here, you need to identify yourself, if only by some sort of cryptonym.

Welcome to Virtual Mirage

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the cat. "We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad," asked Alice?

"You must be," said the cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Good Morning

Virtual Mirage - What's on the other side of the mirror? Ask Alice how deep the rabbit hole really goes.

This blog is an extension of MY JOURNEY because sometimes my journey needs more explanation, and sometimes there is more to be said than can be expressed on one ordinary blog.

Sometimes it's politics (very serious), sometimes I address the human condition with a dose of humor, and other times it may seem as if the track is headed in a unique direction. I can be a complicated guy at times.

There are a few things you'll find I consider:

* Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

* Sometimes the questions are complex but the answers are simple.

* Love is the only condition where the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

* Steers do not sign treaties with meat packers. (think on that)

* Taxes are NEVER levied for the benefit of the taxed.

* The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no victory possible in defense.

WHITE POWDER (Novel)

There is something intoxicating about a secret.

THE OLD WHORE (NOVEL)

In the peculiar culture of the Central Intelligence Agency, "old whores" are people who will do whatever it takes to get the job done, irrespective of the cost.

EXILES FROM EDEN (NOVEL)

Sparks fly as two star-crossed lovers meet. He runs toward trouble as she yearns for something missing. And it ends in a flight from and toward justice.

About Me

Today, I balance work and play as much as anyone can. All things remaining equal, play is more important. Life is short - it's important to make every day count for something, if only to yourself.
I'm a former tinker/tailor/soldier/sailor who has now decided that maybe it really wasn't all done for nothing.

This site contains copyrighted material, the use of which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, and as such this constitutes 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Act. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.